Ironies in the contemporary study of gender

Women and autonomy: using structural analysis of social behavior to find autonomy within connections

In their work to construct psychological theories about women's development, Carol Gilligan and Jean Baker Miller both highlight the centrality of interpersonal connections in women's lives. As they describe how women's senses of self and morality are organized around relationships, Gilligan and Miller tend to contrast affiliation with autonomy. The message that readers often take from this view is that autonomy has no meaning for women--is somehow beneath them, beyond them, or unnatural to them. Although Miller and Gilligan dichotomize affiliation and autonomy, they also provide numerous examples in which women's feelings of worth, ability, and self-consideration enhance relatedness. We argue that autonomy can be understood as a sense of freedom and personal integrity that encompasses these same characteristics, and we use the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior to clarify how autonomy makes critical contributions to interpersonal connections.